Jazz Musician Pete Daily Dies of Cancer

Pete Daily, a cornet player whose hit tunes “South” and “I Want to Linger” enjoyed popularity in the late 1940s, died Saturday at St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank. He was 75.

Daily, a native of Portland, Ind., played baritone horn and tuba in school but switched to cornet and began his professional career in nightclubs in the Chicago area.

Moving to California in 1942, he played with Ozzie Nelson’s band before serving in the merchant marine for a year. He started his own combo, Pete Daily’s Chicagoans, in 1946, and regularly attracted crowds at Hollywood nightclubs and the yearly Dixieland Jubilee shows held at the Pan Pacific and Shrine auditoriums before he stopped playing in the late 1950s.

After a series of personal tragedies, including a fire that killed his second wife and left him severely burned, Daily resumed performing in 1975, but a stroke and paralysis in 1979 put an end to his career.

“He was obscure in the public eye but he was instrumental in the big renaissance of interest in Dixieland jazz which is burgeoning today,” said Floyd Levin, former president of the Southern California Hot Jazz Society.

Cause of death was lung cancer complicated by pneumonia. Survivors included his wife, Lois Sterns, and six children from previous marriages.